Conventional injection molding machines include a plastics material plasticizing and injection unit. The plasticizing-injection unit is intended to take particulate plastics material and subject it to mechanical working and thermal conditioning to such a point that it can flow under an applied pressure into a mold to form a desired article. The mold typically includes a pair of mold halves commonly referred to as the male and female mold parts and also commonly referred to as the mold core and mold cavity portions, respectively. The mold halves are usually mounted to a pair of molding machine platens, with the mold cavity portion typically being attached to a stationary platen and the mold core portion typically being attached to a movable platen.
In a conventional hot runner system, a heated manifold is situated in the mold side attached to the stationary platen to receive the melt stream of moldable material from a machine nozzle of the injection molding machine through a sprue bushing. The manifold is connected to a plurality of heated nozzles, each of which is connected to a respective mold cavity. The sprue bushing, manifold, nozzles, mold cavity and mold core are typically spaced between the stationary and movable platens by a plurality of mold plates such as one or more core plates, cavity plates, manifold plates, clamping plates, back plates, etc. that are clamped together when the injection molding machine is closed during an injection cycle.
A typical mold change involves the removal of the complete mold including various mold plates from the injection mold machine in a manner which requires the disconnecting of water hoses, airlines, and electrical connectors necessary for proper operation of the machine. In such systems, before disconnecting all these services, the mold must be drained of water and the hot-runner switched off. The mold is typically then unclamped and hoisted out of the injection molding machine, typically with an overhead crane. When installing a new mold in the injection molding machine, in a known manner all the above-mentioned services must be reconnected. The process of reconnection is quite time consuming and messy due to the necessity of disconnecting water hoses. Safety is also a concern during reconnection as mold technicians may need to climb on top of the mold to access the water and electrical connections. Furthermore, since all services are disconnected and reconnected, valuable time is lost waiting for the mold and machine to heat up again once the new mold is installed. In certain circumstances when changing molds in such a manner, the service hoses typically have to be fully removed as different molds have different sizes and quantities of connectors.
It is known to provide systems that attempt to achieve the quick and efficient changing of mold machine components. However, a need still exists in the art for a quick change mold for an injection molding system that solves one or more of the problems noted above.